Conquests of Timur

The Conquests of Timur were a series of aggressive military campaigns that were fought by Timur the Lame against the remnants of the Mongol Empire and many other states. For the settled civilizations of Western and Southern Asia, the threat from the Central Asian steppe was gaining momentum again. Even Christian Europe was unnerved. The more they demonized him, the better Timur Lenk liked it; he reveled in his self-styled status as a "second coming" of Genghis Khan.

Setting a Precedent
In the 13th century, Genghis Khan had emerged from nowhere with his Mongol warbands, to establish the biggest land empire the world had ever seen. To the ambitious warlord, his story offered an alluring vision of what ruthlessness and courage might achieve.

A Dubious Heritage
Transoxania, in present-day Uzbekistan, now belonged to the Khanate of Chagatai. Named for one of Genghis Khan's sons, the territory was still ruled by his successors, the Barlas, a Turkic-Mongolian group who prided themselves on their illustrious line of descent, though there is thought to be little merit to their claims.

Conquests
Timur Lenk began his rise, in the best steppe tradition, as a raider and livestock-rustler. By his early 20s, he headed a warband 300 strong. His flair for fighting was already evident - as were his rigor and courage. Like his idol, Genghis Khan, however, he was a politician too. Deftly playing off the emnities and ambitions of men much more powerful than himself, Timur had made himself the leader of the Barlas clan by 1360; eight years later he was leader of the Chagatai Confederation. No one was in any doubt where the real power lay. Making Samarkand his headquarters, he vowed to transform it into one of the world's greatest cities.

But before he could do so, Timur had to make himself the master of the steppe: his campaigns of the 1370s took him east into the Altai region and north into the Golden Horde. Only when Central Asia had been secured did he direct his energies south and west. He began in 1381 by invading Iran, a land of small states once united under the Mongol Ilkhanids. First Herat, then other cities fell. Few offered any serious resistance.

Strategy of atrocity
Only afterward, when Timyur had left, did the region rise in rebellion. And only then was Timur's true nature displayed. Turning back to put down the revolt, he did so with a cruelty that was little short of frenzied. At Sabzevar he had 2,000 living prisoners heaped with mud and masonry, literally building them into the fabric of a tower. Yet there was method in his madness: he was using atrocity as an instrument of strategy. Wherever he went, he built pyramids of skulls, a warning to the world, and a monument to his murderousness.

Pushing west through Azerbaijan into Christian Georgia, he forced the king to convert to Islam before heading south through Armenia and back into Iran. In 1387 he took Isfahan, but then the rebels killed Timur's tax collectors. Again, he proved implacable in his anger.

Perpetual motion
Timur was always a nomad at heart, a raider rather than an empire-builder. He governed by fear, mounting punitive patrols at any sign of trouble. By 1393 he was back in Iran, crushing a rebellion with his customary cruelty. Attacks on Baghdad and Kurdistan were followed by raids on the Golden Horde, sacking and burning as he went. The impression is of a leader eaten up by an insane blood lust; but Timur was more rational than that. The sacking of southern Russia cut off one of the main commercial corridors between the East and West. Trade had now to pass through his own territories.

Whatever horror he induced in the civilian populations of the countries he conquered, Timur inspired adulation and undying loyalty in his men. As his conquests continued, his army grew in size till it eventually numbered 200,000. A master-tactician, he loved ruses and feints; his troops would pretend to flee then suddenly regroup and attack.

Timur was a Muslim and frequently professed to be fighting for his faith - even if many thousands of his victims were Muslims too. In 1398 he led his army over the mountains of the Hindu Kush. From the Punjab to Delhi, they sacked every city they passed. It is said that they killed as many as 100,000 civilians before they even reached the capital.

The Ottoman Turks also fell short of Timur's Islamic standards. In 1402 he marched against Sultan Bayezid I at Ankara. Bayezid's defeat gave Timur a dubous role as savior of Christian Byzantium and the Turk's conquest of Constantinople was put back 50 years. By 1404 Timur had achieved all he had set out to do. The Middle East was his; his sumptuous tomb stood the pride of place in his capital, Samarkand. He was laid to rest in it the following year.

Aftermath
To the great relief of his subject nations, Timur Lank turned out to be an anomaly. His successors' Timurid dynasty quickly destroyed itself through infighting.

Founding Empires
One refugee from the Timurid dynasty's succession-struggle was the Muslim conqueror Babur. In the early 16th century he invaded India and founded the Mogul dynasty. In the meantime, the Ottoman Turks were to recover from their defeat at the battle of Ankara to reassert their hold over Anatolia, taking Constantinople in 1453 and widening their empire into Europe.